Hiking amidst the artifacts

In addition to the crazy vegetation and desert scenery, there are also quite a number of human artifacts leftover from the ranching and mining days in the area.  We took several short hikes to poke around and see what we could find.

An unusually amusing sign defacement.

A surprising oasis behind the dam.

Kid, with funny rental van in the background.

The area around the Wall Street mill was littered with old cars and equipment, in addition to the old stamp mill.

Chad's always good at providing explanations.

Car parts sometime look like they have faces.

 Critters and flowers abounded too.  A common western fence lizard.

Less common for us to see was the horned desert lizard.

Nice cactus bloom with adjacent Dudleya

And of course, lots of Joshua trees.

Old buildings are fun

and make good picture frames.

 The Desert Queen Mine is one of many in the park.

Chad enjoyed peering in.  Fencing is abundant to prevent further exploration.

A thingie to play with!

Maybe its most useful function today.

Can you tell we had fun?